All the fun of the festival

Last week was Plymouth's fifth annual Social Enterprise Festival. Held, appropriately, during Global Entrepreneurship Week, it saw over 300 people attend nine different events on social enterprise themes. My highlights were as follows.

The week kicked off with a wonderful and animated talk by Rubies in the Rubble founder, Jenny Dawson. Jenny's passion and practicality struck me. She just got on with it and learned as she went. There was clearly deep strategy and clever thinking involved but also the sense of bootstrapping - so common to social entrepreneurs - was strong. If there's a lesson around the perceived need for endless business planning and analysis versus learning by doing this was it.

We at Iridescent Ideas delivered a masterclass on measuring social impact alongside Sara Burgess, CIC Regulator. The need to start some kind of social impact measurements, even if bespoke and limited in scope, was a key theme. The sooner you start, the sooner you learn how to do it better and the sooner you'll get great information on your impact.

Wednesday saw the flagship event, the Social Enterprise City Summit, hosted by Plymouth City Council. There was a variety of speakers including a great rabble rousing speech by Peter Holbrook, CEO of Social Enterprise UK. We also heard from some of the investees of the Council's Social Enterprise Investment Fund. A common theme was the need to remember social impact along with talk of the economic benefits of social enterprise. The looming general and council election was an ever present context. The ideas in the Social Economy Alliance's great manifesto also need to come to the fore over the next few months. Now is our chance to shape the social, economic and political landscape. Now is when we need to be clear about the world we want to see over the next five years.

The Next Big Things, an exhibition of newer social enterprises at Thinqtanq, was a fascinating insight into the needs of new entrepreneurs. Many are looking for start-up investment and also beginning to clarify their business and social ideas.

Finally Friday saw an insightful talk by Jessica Smith of Poached Creative - known for their excellent work on the Buy Social campaign - on marketing for social enterprises. This was full of practical and strategic advice.

The week showed me that we all - large and small, new and established - need to sharpen up our understanding of our markets, our ability to sell our products and services and to build strong brands to survive and thrive. We also need to get back to first principles on why we exist, the social causes we tackle and the impact we are having. Finally, the need to talk to politicians and campaign for change was brought into sharp focus.